


The Cloak and the Dagger

by fushiginokunino



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, I only tagged the speaking roles, M/M, wtgfs are mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:34:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28458348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fushiginokunino/pseuds/fushiginokunino
Summary: Once upon a time,“Good lord, Martin, I agreed that we could write it down, not add frivolous embellishments.”(Once upon a time, there was evil and there was fear; there was loneliness and there was love.)
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 18
Kudos: 49
Collections: End of Year Exchange 2020





	The Cloak and the Dagger

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TwoDrunkenCelestials](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwoDrunkenCelestials/gifts).



> The prompt for this was "fairy tale AU," which was great because TMA fairy tale AUs are all I have thought about for upwards of a year. None of the ideas I've been outlining were anywhere near short enough, though, so I came up with this on the fly.
> 
> Unrelatedly, I realized there is a bit in here that could be read as a pot shot at JonElias, so I just want to say in advance that it's not; it's a pot shot at the, like, infinity dudes who have stood SO CLOSE TO MY FACE without asking over the course of my life.

_Once upon a time,_

“Good lord, Martin, I agreed that we could write it down, not add frivolous embellishments.”

_ Once upon a time,  
_

“You’re a menace.”

“Mm-hm.”

_All the southern lands from the Forsaken Sea to the Nameless Valley were one kingdom. They were ruled by a terrible sorcerer known to his people as the Panopt, for he kept obsessive and relentless watch over each and every one of his subjects, that he could ever control the fate of his demesne and all within. So intent was he on his work, however, that he found himself quite alone in the twilight of his life—the few unfortunate companions he once had long since sacrificed to his selfish ends._

_Thus, upon finding himself in need of an heir to his power, he instead prevailed upon a man who had for some years labored in service of the kingdom’s archive, travelling the length and breadth of the land to investigate manifestations of the arcane. His role was to experience these things in a way deeper and more visceral than pure observation—and then to pen a report of what he had understood for the Panopt, who would peruse it at his leisure and send it back to be sealed safely away in the Archive. This man’s name was Jon,_

“And he was afraid.”

“That’s not how you’re supposed to introduce the hero and you know it.”

“You’re the hero. Anyway, it’s the only thing that mattered.”

“Maybe to him. But he doesn’t get to choose.”

“I suppose.”

_And he was brave, and kind. He only ever wanted to help, even when it hurt him. Foolish people often took this for foolishness. The Panopt, who had never seen far enough beyond his own fear to truly care for anyone else, took it for weakness._

_So the Panopt called Jon to his great tower, and made him recall the many dark secrets he had learned in his travels, though he would rather they be forgotten. He made him practice until he could call upon the terrible powers he had encountered, though he never wished to wield them. Throughout all of this, the Panopt watched, absently, as he attended his business elsewhere, and answered none of Jon’s myriad questions._

_Here in the tower, with only the Panopt’s cold regard for company, Jon felt both scrutinized and abandoned. Nevertheless, he continued to do what was demanded of him, dreaming of the day when he would understand how the kingdom and its ruler had come to be this way, and know how to do something about it. He could hardly fail to notice, then, that despite his talk of heritance, the Panopt never taught him aught of his own power, the watcher’s craft, which had allowed him to rule for longer than anyone could remember._

_It was this line of questioning that at last earned Jon an answer._

_“Why, my eyes will be your eyes, and my sight will be your sight, so you needn’t concern yourself with that,” said the Panopt to Jon, close enough to kiss his brow._

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“Really? Because I feel ill just writing that.”

“Yes, well. You can see why I panicked.”

“I’ll say. Come here.”

“...”

“Better?”

“Yes.”

_Though he had harbored suspicions about the Panopt’s motives, Jon didn’t exactly have a plan for this situation. Still, his knowledge of the kingdom’s horrors was much more real than that of the Panopt, who had spent so long keeping them at arm’s length._

_It was a knowledge that he could hold in his hands, and in an instant he used it to weave around himself a cloak of blood and of rot, of death and of grief, and all the other things that men fear to look upon. It turned him into something far beyond any beast, a monster with features like shadows in the dark._

_The Panopt, whose every eye had been turned toward it, threw his hands up to cover his face, curling in on himself like a frightened child. (This was how an intrepid pair of souls from the archive found him, much later, when they at last resolved to find out where the feeling of being watched had gone.) Jon fled the tower, then its auspice, then the kingdom, at last seeking refuge in a forest to the north._

_There, he collapsed._

_The first to come upon the monster was Melanie, who was brave, but not stupid. When she tried to approach and get a better look at it through the gloom of the clearing and it roared at her with a voice like a hundred violins being played with a hundred knives, she understood the threat, and left._

_Melanie and her wife were, however, experts in trading information on magical dealings throughout the northern kingdom, so it was only a matter of days before all manner of people—knights and princesses, sorcerers and gossips—knew that there was something very, very wrong in the forest, and wished to see for themselves. They were disappointed to find that the canopy in the clearing where the monster resided was woven quite thickly indeed, and even at midday it was impossible to see much more than an impossibly shifting bulk of sharp limbs and scuttling edges through the gloom._

_Eventually, word of the creature, as well as the fact that none had thus far been able to come near it without being overcome with terror and taking flight, reached the court. This was presided over by a council—arguably a better form of government than a horrible all-seeing monarch—_

“ _Martin_.”

“I _said_ ‘arguably’!”

_Which nonetheless had its problems in the fact it took an age for the council to decide on anything, such as what to do about a monster in the wood, and that the country’s surfeit of princes were constantly vying for a place on it._

_The prince with which this story is concerned never held such ambitions. Joining the council required money, strength, or brilliance, and Prince Martin was certain he had none of these. Even his own mother thought he would never rise above the low-level clerk position he had held for the last ten years. So, though he could easily think of several alternatives to “kill it” or “leave it alone and hope it doesn’t kill us,” he didn’t consider performing any dramatic feats that might solve the council’s current dilemma._

“Yet look at you now.”

“Mm. In charge and bored out of my mind.”

“At least the country’s in decent hands.”

“If you say so.”

“I do.”

_He was curious, however, and unlikely to be missed if he disappeared for a bit. So, in the dead of night, he crept out of the castle, and made his way into the forest._

_He arrived when day was just beginning to break, though only the barest sign of this filtered through the leaves above, and found that he had been correct in assuming no one else would bother coming so early. Stepping into the clearing, he held his lantern aloft in the hopes that the light might penetrate the gloom...and found that he could see perfectly, if only for one bright moment._

_There was a fire burning in the middle of the clearing, attended by a disheveled man who sat staring into the flames. His exhaustion showed in the hollows of his face, and the look in his eyes made Martin ache. He knew what it was to be lonely._

_With the intrusion of his lantern-light the man’s gaze snapped toward him, wide-eyed, and in one swift movement he pulled the hood of his cloak up. The fire went out in the same instant, and Martin nearly fell straight into the bushes in surprise._

“You also made quite an odd yelping noise, if I recall.”

“We are omitting that for the sake of Prince Martin’s dignity.”

_The lantern on its own was not sufficient to see the center of the clearing, so when he recovered himself, Martin crept forward again._

_“Are you there?”_

_In response, there came a roar of silence that he did not so much hear as feel in his bones._

_“Right. No closer. I understand,” he said, though he wasn’t sure he did. After a moment’s pause, he added, “I’ll come back. Tomorrow, at dawn.”_

_Tomorrow, at dawn, only the monster and its empty howl awaited him. He made the same promise, and came back the next day, and the next. All the while the council debated, and Martin deliberated over whether to share what he had seen. He wanted to believe that those who feared the monster would stay their hands if they knew, but the cost should he be wrong was too much to bear._

_On the fifth day he visited the clearing, the fire was there again, along with the man, though he stood rather than sat. He regarded Martin with a flinching sort of caution and seemed loath to meet his eyes. When Martin introduced himself, he nodded, and said nothing. Yet he left the hood of his cloak down, which is how Martin came to have his first proper look at it._

_Through the fog that curled around what ought to have been the hem, he could see where it became thick, dark roots that tunneled into the earth below. Above, it bled into a dizzying mesh of fur, sinewy flesh that watered the roots with occasional droplets of blood, and strings that thrummed musically as the whole cloak writhed independently of its owner. He could swear the materials changed when he blinked, and he could hardly look at the hood itself for feeling that he would be pulled into its chasmic darkness. What disturbed him the most, though, were the strands weaving it all together, coming to interlace thickly across the man’s torso and creeping tightly up his throat, holding the cloak faster than any tie or clasp. The livid nail marks gouging the small band of exposed skin above the silver silk on the man’s throat confirmed that he was as trapped as he appeared._

_When Martin glanced up, strangely embarrassed for having seen what he had, the man who was not a monster was staring back at him. He didn’t know what the man was seeking in his eyes. He didn’t know if he found it. But when he said, “I’ll be back tomorrow. I promise,” the man nodded once more, and that was enough._

_The next day, the man had resumed his seat by the fire. To Martin’s utter surprise, when he asked if he could sit with him, he nodded again._

_“Jon.”_

_Martin had barely managed to understand that this was a name through the shock of being spoken to when Jon continued, “Are you going to kill me?”_

_“What? No!”_

_“...I wouldn’t blame you if you did,” Jon said pensively, still gazing at the fire._

_“Fine. But I’m not going to,” Martin replied, somehow feeling irate in spite of the knowledge that many people were, at this very moment, indeed in favor of killing Jon._

_“Very well.” Jon looked askance at him, and began to speak._

_In the following days, Martin came to know the full story. How Jon had ended up in the Panopt’s tower, and what he had done to escape. How he had known the cloak could not be undone. How he still didn’t want to die like this._

_Jon spoke mostly to the fire, but when Martin asked a question or contributed some detail from his own experience, he was rewarded by Jon’s curious gaze being turned in his direction. Indeed, Jon seemed unusually interested in Martin’s life, despite its relative mundanity._

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, I’ve never escaped from an evil sorcerer or anything, so…

“Martin—”

“I just never really got it, to be honest? We must have spent at least as much time talking about me as we did about you, and...”

“Really, Martin?”

“What?”

“I am definitely bringing this up next time we’re at a ball and you call me ‘oblivious’ for not noticing that someone whose name I can’t even recall is making doe-eyes at me.”

“What are you— _oh!_ ”

“There is absolutely no cause for you to look so pleased with yourself.”

_As time passed, their visits drifted further from discussions of life and death, and more toward idle conversation. Rarely had Martin felt so comfortable and content as he did in those early morning hours, and they began to lose track of time until their goodbyes were inevitably hasty and preceded by the sound of others approaching through the trees. Yet Martin still could not bring himself to ask what he knew, inevitably, he must._

_The Panopt was perhaps the most indiscriminate about it, but his was not the only kingdom with arcane secrets, and keeping the records of them neat and orderly was one of Martin’s many menial duties. This is why he knew that in the castle’s treasury was a dagger that could cut through anything the wielder wished—secrets, lies, joy, sorrow, life, death, anything—and precisely how to remove it. He had borrowed this dagger when he saw Jon’s cloak in the firelight that morning, and now kept it on him at all times._

“Borrowed… Is that what they’re calling it now?”

“I put it back when I was done!”

_He knew it would work. He just needed Jon’s permission to get close enough to use it. Still, he hesitated. He had a cold conviction, leaden in his chest, that if he lost Jon’s trust he would never, ever earn it back. So he waited, and he wondered, and he hated himself for it._

_It was Daisy—formerly a prince, now a lord on the council, though she would not allow anyone to call her by a title—who informed him that he had waited too long. This was terrifying in more ways than one, as Daisy was incredibly intimidating, particularly when she appeared at one’s quarters in the middle of the night._

_“Council’s decided,” she said without preamble, “And now they’re in a hurry. They’re sending half the guard to hunt him. Probably be there by dawn.”_

_“H—” Martin began, though even he wasn’t sure what he was about to ask._ “How did you find out _he’s_ a _him?_ ” _perhaps, or,_ “How did you know to tell me?” _or even,_ “Have we been friends this whole time and I just never realized?”

 _“Go. Now,” she interrupted, the slam of the door in his face knocking him out of his confused reexamining of everything he had thought to be true._ Dawn, _he recalled._

_The details of dressing, stumbling his way out of the castle, and crashing through the forest to the clearing were lost to him. All he could think of was how Jon would react when Martin showed up far before the appointed time, how he would feel when he saw the dagger, what would happen if Martin couldn’t convince him._

_They would have to go through him to get to Jon. This he vowed._

_He burst into the clearing before he quite realized where he was, and the first thing he saw was Jon, eyes wide as they had been upon their first meeting. He stood up when Martin began speaking, but Martin continued to cast his gaze downward as he wheezed out an explanation, desperate to make Jon understand, sides aching and voice catching in his throat. When he finally finished, it took every scrap of will he possessed to summon the courage to look at Jon’s face._

_Jon was looking at him the same way he had the one and only time Martin had mentioned his mother. His expression was unspeakably gentle, and upon seeing it, something in Martin that had broken long ago put itself back together. Martin stepped closer, and Jon nodded once._

_When he drew the dagger, Jon didn’t even flinch. He stood calmly as Martin tilted his chin, and raised the point to his throat—stiller than Martin, who found himself trembling. Bringing his hands to rest gently on Martin’s shaking shoulders, he answered the question that had never been asked. Just like that._

_“It’s all right. I trust you.”_

_And just like that, the blade parted the threads, and the cloak fell away._

_By the time the hunting party arrived, there was no monster to be found, and nothing to fear. The dying firelight shone upon tattered black cloth, a single silver dagger, and the two of them, arms around each other._

“...Is that it?”

“That’s the end.”

“Aren’t you going to...er...”

“I thought we weren’t doing ‘frivolous embellishments’.”

“It...wouldn’t feel right without it.”

“Oh?”

“You’re doing this on purpose.”

_And they lived happily ever after._


End file.
